It has long been considered desirable to provide a cutting edge which will reduce or minimize the tendency for the edge to wear or abrade off as it is used to cut and slice various substances or medians, thereby minimizing the need to re-sharpen. For this purpose, knives used for cutting and the like, such as hunting, camping, fishing, kitchen, cutlery, meat or butchering industries and/or general purpose or special purpose knives are generally unsuitable for extended use before having to be re-sharpened to continue its use as a cutting or slicing tool. Cutting edges found on lawn mower blades are frequently worn quickly causing a tearing of the grass which exposes the lawn to diseases, unless the blades are periodically re-sharpened. Cutting edges found on knives, scissors, shears, and the like are conventionally provided with a hardened blade or otherwise treated coating such as nitrating, sputtering, sintering, hot spraying, bonding or adhesion coated or other means to extend its edge holding characteristic. Consequently, it is necessary to use a sharpening method or system to re-sharpen the blade often.
The cutting edge of a blade, such as a knife blade, also has the disadvantage that it wears more rapidly and is damaged more readily, inasmuch as the area of the cutting surface due to abrasion, and wear is markedly reduced owing to the removal of metal by abrasion and also because the cutting surface constitutes a material or finish that is continuously removed. Consequently, their performance level falls more rapidly and the knives must be re-sharpened or replaced more frequently than knives having a carbide impregnated cutting edge.
Tungsten carbide and titanium carbide have been utilized as a tooling and engineering material in many industrial applications as they exhibit superior toughness and abrasion resistance given its high hardness. However, all known devices used to apply carbide or the like deposits are not available to average consumer, or involve such a complicated process that it would not be practical for the average consumer to apply such a cutting edge. What is needed in the art is apparatus and method of applying a carbide coating to cutting blade, such as a knife, scissors, lawn mover blade, lawn edger, shovel, ice scraper, or any other commonly available blade that would benefit from maintaining a sharp edge and minimize the need to re-sharpen.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,681,846 discloses the advantages of tungsten carbide for use with reciprocating knife blades. In this disclosure a knife blade having outer layers of a relatively soft carrier material, such as steel or aluminum, and an inner layer of relatively hard material such as tungsten carbide. The inner layer may be deposited on one or the other, or both outer layers, or may be bonded thereto as a separate member, or may be inserted in cavities defined by these outer layers of carrier material. When assembled, the thickness of the harder inner layer varies in the longitudinal direction so that when the longitudinally extending cutting edge is used to cut in a reciprocating action, said edge will wear away in an uneven fashion producing a serrated edge which need not be sharpened as frequently as a conventional knife blade.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,762,243 discloses a method of making sharp-edged cutting elements in which one of two opposite surfaces of a work piece has a thin layer added thereto.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,666,906 discloses a carbide deposition structure which includes a carbide electrode and workpiece, a low voltage, low frequency oscillator operably associated with the switch for turning the switch on and off and a high frequency, high voltage oscillator for initiating an arc between the electrode and workpiece.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,446,932 discloses a method and apparatus for the coating of a substrate with conductive material wherein a pendulously supported coating electrode disk carried by an oscillation-damped arm bears against substrate resiliently supported at two spaced-apart locations (e.g. a continuous tensioned band or endless conveyor carrying a number of bodies). A discharge is generated between the disk, which may have a continuous or discontinuous surface and the substrate while the disk is rotated in contact with the substrate. The discharge also serves to carry portions of the electrode disk material onto the substrate.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,911,579 discloses an improved razor blade and methods of making the same wherein the cutting edge formed by two intersecting surfaces is sputter deposited with a refractory material which is subsequently overlaid with a sputter deposited coating of material displaying adhesion to a final lubricious coating.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,373 discloses a knife blade that has a cutting portion which includes two adjoining faces defining a cutting edge and comprises a relatively soft or high wear base material and a relatively hard or low wear coating. One of the faces is formed by the relatively hard coating and the other face is formed by the relatively soft base material.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,299,860 discloses a method of impregnating the surface of a metal substrate with wear resistant particles to impart wear resisting characteristics to the surface. The substrate surface is subjected to a relatively moving high-powered laser beam to cause localized surface melting in passes there across, and hard wear resistant particles injected into the melt.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,231 discloses surface-coated cemented carbide articles. This method comprises providing a 3-50% by weight dispersion of fine powders of 20 microns or less containing 50% or more of titanium carbide in a liquid consisting mainly of an organic solvent, applying a DC voltage of 10-500 volts to the surface of tungsten carbide base cemented carbides containing 4-30% of a binder metal in said dispersion to thus cause electrophoretic deposition of the fine powders thereon, heating the coated surface at a temperature of 1260-1550 degree C. in vacuum or in a reducing or inert atmosphere and thereby forming a coating layer consisting mainly of titanium carbide of 100 microns or less on the surface of the cemented carbides.
U.S. Patent No. 2006/0185254 discloses a diamond cutting-edge material and a manufacturing method thereof in that the diamond particles thinly coat with a metallic thin film compared to the conventional Nickel (NI) coating, and thus the present invention provides an edge including a plurality of diamond particles having a 100 um or less diameter at least partially coated with Titanium.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,701,627 discloses a utility knife blade that involves joining a tool steel wire to a front edge of an alloy steel backing strip. The composite strip is then annealed, and the annealed strip is straightened to eliminate any camber therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,800,383 discloses a tungsten carbide alloyed with fluorine in amounts up to 0.5 wt % and possibly with fluorocarbon compositions by chemical vapor deposition, in which tungsten hexafluoride, hydrogen and a carbon-containing gas are used. The tungsten carbide coatings are deposited on construction materials and items made from them.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,166,371 discloses a cutting tool having a blade coated on one side with a hard coating living a laminar or layered microstructure. The coating includes at least one layer made of tungsten carbides substantially or entirely free of metallic tungsten.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,336,950 discloses an electrode rod for spark alloying of high melting compounds such as carbide and boride.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,477,616 and 5,431,071 disclose knife blades and methods of production by providing a knife blade with a cutting edge having a harder material than the body of the blade comprising a v-shaped cutting edge formed on a blank, and such that the cutting tip lies substantially central of the width of the blank with a coating of a material harder than the material of the blank.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,109,138 discloses a knife blade including a cutting edge formed on a blank. One side of the edge is provided with a coating formed by a particulate material in a matrix. The matrix is softer than the particulate material, and the coating is such that a considerable number of the particulates project from the matrix thereby defining a cutting tip on the cutting edge. The coating is cemented carbide such as tungsten carbide. The coating is provided by high pressure velocity oxy-fuel.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,424 discloses a composite cutting blade for a knife or other cutting instrument. The blade is formed from a body section made of a strong tough material formed with a dovetail configuration along one edge thereof and a cutting edge section made of a hard durable material that has a matching dovetail configuration along one edge. In one embodiment the body is titanium and the cutting edge is high carbon stainless steel.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,882 discloses a method of embedding tungsten carbide particles on an edge of a cutting tool such as a saw blade, a drill, or the like. The cutting edge is partially melted by an energy beam, for example a laser beam, or an electron beam. A laser beam is preferred since, then, the process can be carried out in air, or in a protective gas atmosphere, rather than in a vacuum. The beam partially melts the cutting edge and the granules of the hard metal particles, such as tungsten carbide.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,784 discloses a hard facing for an agricultural machine blade which contains tungsten carbide of 40 to 100 um in particle size and a hardness of greater than 1400 HV in a matrix with hardness of 500 to 800 HV.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,684 discloses an electric discharge surface treating method providing a nitriding treatment, performed on a coated layer.
What is needed is an apparatus and method that allows the average consumer to impregnate tungsten and titanium carbides to permit high endurance cutting performance from most any cutting edge.